Creepy, crazy, and obviously fake content is often called “slop.” The word's rise online, thanks in part to the widespread availability of generative artificial intelligence, made it Merriam-Webster's word of the year for 2025.
“It’s such a telling word,” Greg Barlow, president of Merriam-Webster, said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s announcement. “It's part of transformative artificial intelligence technology, and people find it fascinating, annoying and a little funny.”
The word “sludge” was first used in the 1700s to refer to soft dirt, but by extension it has come to mean something of little value. The definition has since expanded to mean “low-quality digital content that is typically produced in large quantities using artificial intelligence.”
In other words, “you know, absurd videos, weird advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks real, cheesy digital books written by artificial intelligence,” Barlow said.
AI video generators such as Sora impressed with their ability to quickly create realistic clips based on text prompts. But the flood of these images on social media, including clips of celebrities and deceased public figures, has raised concerns about misinformation, deepfakes and copyrights.
This kind of content has existed on the Internet for many years, but now these tools have become more accessible – and have been used by politicians, including the head of the Pentagon, for political purposes. Last month, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted a fake image of his lover. cartoon turtle reimagined as a grenade fighterto defend US military action in Venezuela, which has angered social media users and was condemned by the publisher of the original books.
A TikTok account that posted videos of artificial intelligence-generated explosions that others claimed took place in Ukraine has been removed from the platform at the request of CBC News' Visual Investigations team. The report shows how low-quality content generated by generative AI, known as “AI junk,” can distort perceptions and contribute to misinformation.
While the word may evoke fear for some, Barlow says it also instills a sense of hope. The dictionary's president says the surge in searches for the word reflects people becoming more aware of fake or low-quality content and wanting the opposite.
“They want the real thing, they want the real thing,” he said. “When it comes to AI, it's almost a challenging word. When it comes to replacing human creativity, sometimes AI doesn't actually seem that smart.”
How the dictionary chooses the word of the year
Since 2003, the dictionary has chosen one word each year to capture and reflect on the current moment. Last year, shortly after the US presidential election and amid a shift in national sentiment, Merriam-Webster chose the word “polarization.”
To select the word of the year, dictionary editors look at data on which words are showing up more often in search results and in usage. They then come to a consensus on which word best represents the length of the year.
“We like to think we’re a mirror to people,” Barlow said.
The word “parasocial” describes a one-way connection a person has with someone they don't know – such as a celebrity, an influencer, a fictional character in a book, or even an artificially intelligent chatbot. According to University of Toronto Mississauga communications professor Bree McEwan, the term was coined in 1956 but takes on new relevance in 2025 among celebrity fan groups such as Swifties.
Every year there are words that are constantly looked up, but they are filtered out as dictionary editors choose the one that best defines the current year.
“Words like ‘ubiquitous’, ‘paradigm’, ‘although’, ‘regardless’ are always at the top of searches because these are words that are at the edge of our vocabulary,” Barlow said.
Some runners-up
The dictionary also listed some of the words that were frequently searched for in 2025, including “performative,” “gerrymander” and, yes, “6-7.”
Over the summer, the viral term 6-7 gained enormous popularity. This is an inside joke of unclear meaning created by social media, but can be traced back to a 2024 song by rapper Skrilla. Dut Dut (6 7).
“It’s self-referential,” Barlow said. “It’s all in fashion, but it’s not the defining term.”
The word was named the best word of 2025 by Dictionary.com, “rage bait” by Oxford University Press, and “parasocial” by Cambridge Dictionary.
Merriam-Webster also noted that searches for the term “gerrymander” have spiked this year as both Republicans and Democrats sought to redraw voting districts to gain an electoral advantage.
Rachel Bendayan, MP for Parti Quebecois Outremont, was on a 6-7 trend during question period. Canada added 67,000 jobs in October, beating economists' expectations and lowering the unemployment rate to 6.9 percent.
And the search for “performative” was caused by a variety of actions – from activism to the use of matcha. But chief among them, according to Merriam-Webster, is the rise of the “performative man”—online shorthand for a disingenuous guy who pretends to like the things women like in order to earn their trust.
“Tariffs,” a word familiar to Canadians, also made the list. The word originally comes from Italian and Arabic and means “free,” but entered English several centuries ago. The definition is “a list of tariffs imposed by the government on goods imported or, in some countries, exported,” but the word got a boost from Donald Trump's massive shakeup of the global trading system, which he implemented by imposing tariffs on goods from other countries in the name of protecting American industry.
“Touch the grass” is a popular internet phrase used to encourage people to get offline and do normal activities; “conclave” – the process of electing a new Pope; and the extremely long lake name in Massachusetts, “Lake Chargoggaggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaug,” round out the honorable mentions.
